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From Ritual to Romance

J >> Jessie L. Weston >> From Ritual to Romance




While much relating to the god and his precise position in the
Sumerian-Babylonian Pantheon still remains obscure, fragmentary
cuneiform texts connected with the religious services of the period
have been discovered, and to a considerable extent deciphered, and we
are thus in a position to judge, from the prayers and invocations
addressed to the deity, what were the powers attributed to, and the
benefits besought from, him. These texts are of a uniform character;
they are all 'Lamentations,' or 'Wailings,' having for their exciting
cause the disappearance of Tammuz from this upper earth, and the
disastrous effects produced upon animal and vegetable life by his
absence. The woes of the land and the folk are set forth in poignant
detail, and Tammuz is passionately invoked to have pity upon his
worshippers, and to end their sufferings by a speedy return. This
return, we find from other texts, was effected by the action of a
goddess, the mother, sister, or paramour, of Tammuz, who, descending
into the nether world, induced the youthful deity to return with her
to earth. It is perfectly clear from the texts which have been
deciphered that Tammuz is not to be regarded merely as representing
the Spirit of Vegetation; his influence is operative, not only in the
vernal processes of Nature, as a Spring god, but in all its
reproductive energies, without distinction or limitation, he may be
considered as an embodiment of the Life principle, and his cult as a
Life Cult.

Mr Stephen Langdon inclines to believe that the original Tammuz
typified the vivifying waters; he writes: "Since, in Babylonia as in
Egypt, the fertility of the soil depended upon irrigation, it is but
natural to expect that the youthful god who represents the birth and
death of nature, would represent the beneficent waters which flooded
the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates in the late winter, and which
ebbed away, and nearly disappeared, in the canals and rivers in the
period of Summer drought. We find therefore that the theologians
regarded this youthful divinity as belonging to the cult of Eridu,
centre of the worship of Ea, lord of the nether sea."[5] In a note to
this passage Mr Langdon adds: "He appears in the great theological
list as Dami-zi, ab-zu, 'Tammuz of the nether sea,' i.e., 'the faithful
son of the fresh waters which come from the earth.'"[6]

This presents us with an interesting analogy to the citations given in
the previous chapter from the Rig-Veda; the Tammuz cult is specially
valuable as providing us with evidence of the gradual evolution of the
Life Cult from the early conception of the vivifying power of the
waters, to the wider recognition of a common principle underlying
all manifestations of Life.

This is very clearly brought out in the beautiful Lament for Tammuz,
published by Mr Langdon in Tammuz and Ishtar, and also in Sumerian and
Babylonian Psalms.[7]

"In Eanna, high and low, there is weeping,
Wailing for the house of the lord they raise.
The wailing is for the plants; the first lament is 'they grow not.'
The wailing is for the barley; the ears grow not.
For the habitations and flocks it is; they produce not.
For the perishing wedded ones, for perishing children it is; the
dark-headed people create not.
The wailing is for the great river; it brings the flood no more.
The wailing is for the fields of men; the gunu grows no more.
The wailing is for the fish-ponds; the dasuhur fish spawn not.
The wailing is for the cane-brake; the fallen stalks grow not.
The wailing is for the forests; the tamarisks grow not.
The wailing is for the highlands; the masgam trees grow not.
The wailing is for the garden store-house; honey and wine are
produced not.
The wailing is for the meadows; the bounty of the garden, the
sihtu plants grow not.
The wailing is for the palace; life unto distant days is not."

Can anything be more expressive of the community of life animating the
whole of Nature than this poignantly worded lament?

A point which differentiates the worship of Tammuz from the kindred,
and better known, cult of Adonis, is the fact that we have no
liturgical record of the celebration of the resurrection of the deity;
it certainly took place, for the effects are referred to:

"Where grass was not, there grass is eaten,
Where water was not, water is drunk,
Where the cattle sheds were not, cattle sheds are built."[8]

While this distinctly implies the revival of vegetable and animal
life, those features (i.e., resurrection and sacred marriage), which
made the Adonis ritual one of rejoicing as much as of lamentation, are
absent from liturgical remains of the Tammuz cult.[9]

A detail which has attracted the attention of scholars is the lack of
any artistic representation of this ritual, a lack which is the more
striking in view of the important position which these 'Wailings for
Tammuz' occupy in the extant remains of Babylonian liturgies. On this
point Mr Langdon makes an interesting suggestion: "It is probable that
the service of wailing for the dying god, the descent of the mother,
and the resurrection, were attended by mysterious rituals. The actual
mysteries may have been performed in a secret chamber, and
consequently the scenes were forbidden in Art. This would account for
the surprising dearth of archaeological evidence concerning a cult
upon which the very life of mankind was supposed to depend."[10]

In view of the fact that my suggestion as to the possible later
development of these Life Cults as Mysteries has aroused considerable
opposition, it is well to bear in mind that such development is held
by those best acquainted with the earliest forms of the ritual to have
been not merely possible, but to have actually taken place, and that
at a very remote date. Mr Langdon quotes a passage referring to
"Kings who in their day played the rôle of Tammuz in the mystery of
this cult"; he considers that here we have to do with kings who, by a
symbolic act, escaped the final penalty of sacrifice as representative
of the Dying God.[11]

The full importance of the evidence above set forth will become more
clearly apparent as we proceed with our investigation; here I would
simply draw attention to the fact that we now possess definite proof
that, at a period of some 3000 years B.C., the idea of a Being upon
whose life and reproductive activities the very existence of Nature
and its corresponding energies was held to depend, yet who was himself
subject to the vicissitudes of declining powers and death, like an
ordinary mortal, had already assumed a fixed, and practically final,
form; further, that this form was specially crystallized in ritual
observances. In our study of the later manifestations of this cult we
shall find that this central idea is always, and unalterably, the
same, and is, moreover, frequently accompanied by a remarkable
correspondence of detail. The chain of evidence is already strong,
and we may justly claim that the links added by further research
strengthen, while they lengthen, that chain.


PART II. ADONIS

While it is only of comparatively recent date that information as to
the exact character of the worship directed to Tammuz has been
available and the material we at present possess is but fragmentary in
character, the corresponding cult of the Phoenician-Greek divinity we
know as Adonis has for some years been the subject of scholarly
research. Not only have the details of the ritual been examined and
discussed, and the surviving artistic evidence described and
illustrated, but from the anthropological side attention has been
forcibly directed to its importance as a factor in the elucidation of
certain widespread Folk-beliefs and practices.[12]

We know now that the worship of Adonis, which enjoyed among the Greeks
a popularity extending to our own day, was originally of Phoenician
origin, its principal centres being the cities of Byblos, and Aphaka.
From Phoenicia it spread to the Greek islands, the earliest evidence
of the worship being found in Cyprus, and from thence to the mainland,
where it established itself firmly. The records of the cult go back
to 700 B.C., but it may quite possibly be of much earlier date. Mr
Langdon suggests that the worship of the divinity we know as Adonis,
may, under another name, reach back to an antiquity equal with that we
can now ascribe to the cult of Tammuz. In its fully evolved classical
form the cult of Adonis offers, as it were, a halfway house, between
the fragmentary relics of Aryan and Babylonian antiquity, and the
wealth of Medieval and Modern survivals to which the ingenuity and
patience of contemporary scholars have directed our attention.

We all know the mythological tale popularly attached to the name of
Adonis; that he was a fair youth, beloved of Aphrodite, who, wounded
in the thigh by a wild boar, died of his wound. The goddess, in
despair at his death, by her prayers won from Zeus the boon that
Adonis be allowed to return to earth for a portion of each year, and
henceforward the youthful god divides his time between the goddess of
Hades, Persephone, and Aphrodite. But the importance assumed by the
story, the elaborate ceremonial with which the death of Adonis was
mourned, and his restoration to life fêted, the date and character of
the celebrations, all leave no doubt that the personage with whom we
are dealing was no mere favourite of a goddess, but one with whose
life and well-being the ordinary processes of Nature, whether animal
or vegetable, were closely and intimately concerned. In fact the
central figure of these rites, by whatever name he may be called, is
the somewhat elusive and impersonal entity, who represents in
anthropomorphic form the principle of animate Nature, upon whose
preservation, and unimpaired energies, the life of man, directly, and
indirectly, depends.[13]

Before proceeding to examine these rites there is one point, to which
I have alluded earlier, in another connection, upon which our minds
must be quite clear, i.e., the nature of the injury suffered. Writers
upon the subject are of one accord in considering the usual account to
be but a euphemistic veiling of the truth, while the close relation
between the stories of Adonis and Attis, and the practices associated
with the cult, place beyond any shadow of a doubt the fact that the
true reason for this universal mourning was the cessation, or
suspension, by injury or death, of the reproductive energy of the god
upon whose virile activity vegetable life directly, and human life
indirectly, depended.[14] What we have need to seize and to insist
upon is the overpowering influence which the sense of Life, the need
for Life, the essential Sanctity of the Life-giving faculty, exercised
upon primitive religions. Vellay puts this well when he says: "En
réalité c'est sur la conception de la vie physique, considérée dans son
origine, et dans son action, et dans le double principe qui l'anime,
que repose tout le cycle religieux des peuples Orientaux de
l'Antiquité."[15]

Professor von Schroeder says even more precisely and emphatically:
"In der Religion der Arischen Urzeit ist Alles auf Lebensbejahung
gerichtet, Mann kann den Phallus als ihr Beherrschendes Symbol
betrachten."[16] And in spite of the strong opposition to this cult
manifested in Indian literature, beginning with the Rig-Veda, and
ripening to fruition in the Upanishads, in spite of the rise of Buddhism,
with its opposing dictum of renunciation, the 'Life-Cult' asserted its
essential vitality against all opposition, and under modified forms
represents the 'popular' religion of India to this day.

Each and all of the ritual dramas, reconstructed in the pages of
Mysterium und Mimus bear, more or less distinctly, the stamp of their
'Fertility' origin,[17] while outside India the pages of Frazer and
Mannhardt, and numerous other writers on Folk-lore and Ethnology,
record the widespread, and persistent, survival of these rites, and
their successful defiance of the spread of civilization.

It is to this special group of belief and practice that the Adonis
(and more especially its Phrygian counterpart the Attis) worship
belong, and even when transplanted to the more restrained and cultured
environment of the Greek mainland, they still retained their primitive
character. Farnell, in his Cults of the Greek States, refers to the
worship of Adonis as "a ritual that the more austere State religion of
Greece probably failed to purify, the saner minds, bred in a religious
atmosphere that was, on the whole, genial, and temperate, revolted
from the din of cymbals and drums, the meaningless ecstasies of sorrow
and joy, that marked the new religion."[18]

It is, I submit, indispensable for the purposes of our investigation
that the essential character and significance of the cults with which
we are dealing should not be evaded or ignored, but faced, frankly
admitted and held in mind during the progress of our enquiry.

Having now determined the general character of the ritual, what were
the specific details?

The date of the feast seems to have varied in different countries;
thus in Greece it was celebrated in the Spring, the moment of the
birth of Vegetation; according to Saint Jerome, in Palestine the
celebration fell in June, when plant life was in its first full
luxuriance. In Cyprus, at the autumnal equinox, i.e., the beginning
of the year in the Syro-Macedonian calendar, the death of Adonis
falling on the 23rd of September, his resurrection on the 1st of
October, the beginning of a New Year. This would seem to indicate
that here Adonis was considered, as Vellay suggests, less as the god
of Vegetation than as the superior and nameless Lord of Life
(Adonis=Syriac Adôn, Lord), under whose protection the year was
placed.[19] He is the Eniautos Daimon.

In the same way as the dates varied, so, also, did the order of the
ritual; generally speaking the elaborate ceremonies of mourning for
the dead god, and committing his effigy to the waves, preceded the
joyous celebration of his resurrection, but in Alexandria the sequence
was otherwise; the feast began with the solemn and joyous celebration
of the nuptials of Adonis and Aphrodite, at the conclusion of which a
Head, of papyrus, representing the god, was, with every show of
mourning, committed to the waves, and borne within seven days by a
current (always to be counted upon at that season of the year) to
Byblos, where it was received and welcomed with popular rejoicing.[20]
The duration of the feast varied from two days, as at Alexandria, to
seven or eight.

Connected with the longer period of the feast were the so-called
'Gardens of Adonis,' baskets, or pans, planted with quick growing
seeds, which speedily come to fruition, and as speedily wither. In
the modern survivals of the cult three days form the general term for
the flowering of these gardens.[21]

The most noticeable feature of the ritual was the prominence assigned
to women; "ce sont les femmes qui le pleurent, et qui l'accompagnent à
sa tombe. Elles sanglotent éperdument pendant les nuits,--c'est leur
dieu plus que tout autre, et seules elles veulent pleurer sa mort,
et chanter sa résurrection."[22]

Thus in the tenth century the festival received the Arabic name of
El-Bûgat, or 'The Festival of the Weeping Women.'[23]

One very curious practice during these celebrations was that of
cutting off the hair in honour of the god; women who hesitated to make
this sacrifice must offer themselves to strangers, either in the
temple, or on the market-place, the gold received as the price of
their favours being offered to the goddess. This obligation only
lasted for one day.[24] It was also customary for the priests of
Adonis to mutilate themselves in imitation of the god, a distinct
proof, if one were needed, of the traditional cause of his death.[25]

Turning from a consideration of the Adonis ritual, its details, and
significance, to an examination of the Grail romances, we find that
their mise-en-scène provides a striking series of parallels with the
Classical celebrations, parallels, which instead of vanishing, as
parallels have occasionally an awkward habit of doing, before closer
investigation, rather gain in force the more closely they are studied.

Thus the central figure is either a dead knight on a bier (as in the
Gawain versions), or a wounded king on a litter; when wounded the
injury corresponds with that suffered by Adonis and Attis.[26]

Closely connected with the wounding of the king is the destruction
which has fallen on the land, which will be removed when the king is
healed. The version of Sone de Nansai is here of extreme interest;
the position is stated with so much clearness and precision that the
conclusion cannot be evaded--we are face to face with the dreaded
calamity which it was the aim of the Adonis ritual to avert, the
temporary suspension of all the reproductive energies of Nature.[27]

While the condition of the king is the cause of general and vociferous
lamentation, a special feature, never satisfactorily accounted for, is
the presence of a weeping woman, or several weeping women. Thus in
the interpolated visit of Gawain to the Grail castle, found in the
C group of Perceval MSS., the Grail-bearer weeps piteously, as she
does also in Diû Crône.[28]

In the version of the prose Lancelot Gawain, during the night, sees
twelve maidens come to the door of the chamber where the Grail is
kept, kneel down, and weep bitterly, in fact behave precisely as did
the classical mourners for Adonis--"Elles sanglotent éperdument pendant
la nuit."[29]--behaviour for which the text, as it now stands, provides
no shadow of explanation or excuse. The Grail is here the most revered
of Christian relics, the dwellers in the castle of Corbenic have all
that heart can desire, with the additional prestige of being the
guardians of the Grail; if the feature be not a belated survival,
which has lost its meaning, it defies any explanation whatsoever.

In Diû Crône alone, where the Grail-bearer and her maidens are the
sole living beings in an abode of the Dead, is any explanation of the
'Weeping Women' attempted, but an interpolated passage in the Heralds'
College MS. of the Perceval states that when the Quest is achieved,
the hero shall learn the cause of the maiden's grief, and also the
explanation of the Dead Knight upon the bier:

"del graal q'vient aprés
E purquei plure tut adés
La pucele qui le sustient
De la biere qu'aprés vient
Savera la vérité adonques
Ceo que nul ne pot saveir onques
Pur nule rien qui avenist."
fo. 180vo-181.

Of course in the Perceval there is neither a Weeping Maiden, nor a
Bier, and the passage must therefore be either an unintelligent
addition by a scribe familiar with the Gawain versions, or an
interpolation from a source which did contain the features in
question. So far as the texts at our disposal are concerned, both
features belong exclusively to the Gawain, and not to the Perceval
Quest. The interpolation is significant as it indicates a surviving
sense of the importance of this feature.

In the Perlesvaus we have the curious detail of a maiden who has lost
her hair as a result of the hero's failure to ask the question, and
the consequent sickness of the Fisher King. The occurrence of this
detail may be purely fortuitous, but at the same time it is admissible
to point out that the Adonis cults do provide us with a parallel in
the enforced loss of hair by the women taking part in these rites,
while no explanation of this curious feature has so far as I am aware
been suggested by critics of the text.[30]

We may also note the fact that the Grail castle is always situated in
the close vicinity of water, either on or near the sea, or on the
banks of an important river. In two cases the final home of the Grail
is in a monastery situated upon an island. The presence of water,
either sea, or river, is an important feature in the Adonis cult, the
effigy of the dead god being, not buried in the earth, but thrown into
the water.[31]

It will thus be seen that, in suggesting a form of Nature worship,
analogous to this well-known cult, as the possible ultimate source
from which the incidents and mise-en-scène of the Grail stories were
derived, we are relying not upon an isolated parallel, but upon a
group of parallels, which alike in incident and intention offer, not
merely a resemblance to, but also an explanation of, the perplexing
problems of the Grail literature. We must now consider the question
whether incidents so remote in time may fairly and justly be utilized
in this manner.



CHAPTER V

Medieval and Modern Forms of Nature Ritual

Readers of the foregoing pages may, not improbably, object that, while
we have instanced certain curious and isolated parallels from early
Aryan literature and tradition, and, what, from the point of view of
declared intention, appears to be a kindred group of religious belief
and practice in pre-Historic and Classical times, the two, so far,
show no direct signs of affiliation, while both may be held to be far
removed, in point of date, alike from one another, and from the
romantic literature of the twelfth century.

This objection is sound in itself, but if we can show by modern
parallels that the ideas which took form and shape in early Aryan
Drama, and Babylonian and Classic Ritual, not only survive to our day,
but are found in combination with features corresponding minutely with
details recorded in early Aryan literature, we may hold the gulf to be
bridged, and the common origin, and close relationship, of the
different stages to be an ascertained fact. At the outset, and before
examining the evidence collected by scholars, I would remind my
readers that the modern Greeks have retained, in many instances under
changed names, no inconsiderable portion of their ancient mythological
beliefs, among them the 'Adonis' celebrations; the 'Gardens of Adonis'
blossom and fade to-day, as they did many centuries ago, and I have
myself spoken with a scholar who has seen 'women, at the door of their
houses, weeping for Adonis.'[1]

For evidence of the widespread character of Medieval and Modern
survivals we have only to consult the epoch-making works of Mannhardt,
Wald und Feld-Kulte, and Frazer, The Golden Bough;[2] in the pages of
these volumes we shall find more than sufficient for our purpose.
From the wealth of illustration with which these works abound I have
selected merely such instances as seem to apply more directly to the
subject of our investigation.[3]

Thus, in many places, it is still the custom to carry a figure
representing the Vegetation Spirit on a bier, attended by mourning
women, and either bury the figure, throw it into water (as a rain
charm), or, after a mock death, carry the revivified Deity, with
rejoicing, back to the town. Thus in the Lechrain a man in black
women's clothes is borne on a bier, followed by men dressed as
professional women mourners making lamentation, thrown on the village
dung-heap, drenched with water, and buried in straw.[4]

In Russia the Vegetation or Year Spirit is known as Yarilo,[5] and is
represented by a doll with phallic attributes, which is enclosed in a
coffin, and carried through the streets to the accompaniment of
lamentation by women whose emotions have been excited by drink.
Mannhardt gives the lament as follows: "Wessen war Er schuldig? Er
war so gut! Er wird nicht mehr aufstehen! O! Wie sollen wir uns von
Dir trennen? Was ist das Leben wenn Du nicht mehr da bist? Erhebe
Dich, wenn auch nur auf ein Stündchen! Aber Er steht nicht auf, Er
steht nicht auf!"[6]

In other forms of the ritual, we find distinct traces of the
resuscitation of the Vegetation Deity, occasionally accompanied by
evidence of rejuvenation. Thus, in Lausitz, on Laetare Sunday (the
4th Sunday in Lent), women with mourning veils carry a straw figure,
dressed in a man's shirt, to the bounds of the next village, where
they tear the effigy to pieces, hang the shirt on a young and
flourishing tree, "schöne Wald-Baum," which they proceed to cut
down, and carry home with every sign of rejoicing. Here evidently the
young tree is regarded as a rejuvenation of the person represented in
the first instance by the straw figure.[7]

In many parts of Europe to-day the corresponding ceremonies, very
generally held at Whitsuntide, include the mock execution of the
individual representing the Vegetation Spirit, frequently known as the
King of the May. In Bohemia the person playing the rôle of the King
is, with his attendants, dressed in bark, and decked with garlands
of flowers; at the conclusion of the ceremonies the King is allowed a
short start, and is then pursued by the armed attendants. If he is
not overtaken he holds office for a year, but if overtaken, he suffers
a mock decapitation, head-dress, or crown, being struck off, and the
pretended corpse is then borne on a bier to the next village.[8]

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